The potential contributions of concept maps for learning website to assessment for learning practices

The purpose of this paper is to examine the promising contributions of the Concept Maps for Learning (CMfL) website to assessment for learning practices. The CMfL website generates concept maps from relatedness degree of concepts pairs through the Pathfinder Scaling Algorithm. This website also confirms the established principles of effective assessment for learning, for it is capable of automatically assessing students’ higher order knowledge, simultaneously identifying strengths and weaknesses, immediately providing useful feedback and being user-friendly. According to the default assessment plan, students first create concept maps on a particular subject and then they are given individualized visual feedback followed by associated instructional material (e.g., videos, website links, examples, problems, etc.) based on a comparison of their concept map and a subject matter expert’s map. After studying the feedback and instructional material, teachers can monitor their students’ progress by having them create revised concept maps. Therefore, we claim that the CMfL website may reduce the workload of teachers as well as provide immediate and delayed feedback on the weaknesses of students in different forms such as graphical and multimedia. For the following study, we will examine whether these promising contributions to assessment for learning are valid in a variety of subjects

Centre for Research on Educational and Community ServicesExecutive Summary

University in June/July 2012, was evaluated using the same evaluation framework employed annually since 2002. The program is sponsored by the Independent Evaluation Group of the World Bank in conjunction with the Faculty of Public Affairs, Carleton University. As has been the case in previous years, the program consisted of a two-week Core Course followed by a set of workshops in Week 3 and 4. As well, an innovative mini-workshop session was included in the Core Program for the first time in 2012. IPDET has been delivered at Carleton University since 2001 and there are over 2000 alumni. Participants in the program come from a wide diversity of backgrounds and represent public, private and not-for-profit sectors, with 228 participants from more than 75 countries represented in 2012. The results of the evaluation of IPDET 2012 are summarized below, followed by an overview of the program and this evaluation. Recurring Pattern of Success. As has been the case over the past several years, IPDET 2012 was highly successful overall. The pattern of findings is remarkably consistent and corroborate